Irvine Animal Care Center Seeks Foster Parents for Baby Animals

Animals too young to be spayed or neutered are extremely fragile creatures with relatively low survival rates, especially when separated from their mothers. Underage animals are often euthanized in other shelter environments due to insufficient human or financial resources needed to provide them with specialized, around-the-clock care. The Irvine Animal Care Center aims to make a positive impact on this underage animal population and invites the public to join the mission of saving homeless pets by becoming a pet foster parent.

Foster parents provide temporary care for kittens, puppies, and baby rabbits, or animals recovering from a medical procedure, in their own homes. This includes time, energy and a quiet secure space away from any pets you may otherwise have. The Irvine Animal Care Center will provide the training, supplies, food and veterinary care. Fostering can last from a few days to several weeks. ​The success of programs like Third Chance for Pets, which brings animals in from other shelters where their chances for survival are limited, relies heavily on the number of fosters the center has available. The more foster volunteers supporting the center, the more animals it can help.Foster Care Requirements:• At least 2 hours per day, for up to 9 weeks (special needs animals may require additional time)• A quiet and secure place away from other family pets• Ability to transport animals to the center for routine vet care• Willingness to implement basic behavior training routine (provided)• Flexibility to accept animals with minimal notice• Desire to make a meaningful impact on a temporary basisOnce an underage animal has reached its mandatory age and weight, and receives a clean bill of health, it will be spayed/neutered and made available for adoption.Current Volunteer OpportunitiesThe Irvine Animal Care Center currently has new volunteer recruitment opportunities available in the Foster Care program. Learn more and sign up for one of the volunteer workshops at the web address below.Foster Care Volunteer WorkshopsMarch 24, 1:30–4 p.m.www.cityofirvine.org/irvine-animal-care-center/foster-care-program​

​Top 10 Healthiest in U.S.​

The list of accolades earned by Irvine and its residents gets longer every month. This just in: Irvine is one of the healthiest cities in the United States.

WalletHub, a personal finance website that crunches civic data to create a wide variety of lists, recently released its “2019’s Healthiest and Unhealthiest Cities in America” ranking. ​Irvine was named the 10th-healthiest city in the country as part of the study. To identify the places where health is a priority, WalletHub compared more than 170 of the largest U.S. cities across 42 key metrics. The data set includes the cost of a medical visit, fruit and vegetable consumption and fitness clubs per capita, among many other factors.

The top 10 cities out of the more than 170 studied are San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Washington, D.C., New York City, Denver, Honolulu, Scottsdale and Irvine.

The least-healthy city in the U.S. out of those studied? Brownsville, Texas.

A closer look at where Irvine ranks in the numerous categories used for the WalletHub study is intriguing.The highest rankings for the city include second in the nation for highest percent of physically active adults. Seattle ranked first. We were also second best for percentage of obese adults. All that physical activity, no doubt. Another high ranking: we’re 9th best in the percentage of adults who checked their cholesterol in the past five years.

Irvine has the third-lowest rate of premature death in the country according to the study, which makes sense given the physical activity and obesity rankings.

The two cities where fewer years of potential life are lost than Irvine are San Jose, CA, and Yonkers, NY. The category is given triple weight in the overall score, helping push Irvine into the 10th place overall.

Our excellent parks are among the reasons we’re one of the healthiest cities in the nation. The WalletHub report ranks us 5th in the country in the quality of our parks, based mainly on how much we spend on them per capita.

We’re 4th in the country for how “green” a city we are. Environmental factors, they mean. Not the nice hue of our hillsides with all the rain we’ve been having.

Irvine ranks 21st for parkland acres per capita, which seems a bit low. Perhaps those stats were compiled before some of the Great Park Sports Park acres opened. The study says we have 22 parkland acres per capita. We’ll let someone else check their math.

What about the categories in which Irvine did not earn winning marks?

According to the WalletHub study, the city ranks at 170th in the study for hospital beds per capita.

Maybe we’re so healthy we don’t need as many hospital beds?

Irvine ranks toward the middle of the pack in gourmet/specialty food stores per capita (85) and Farmers Markets per capita (46th). Quality over quantity in this category. We’d put the Irvine Farmers Market at Mariner’s Church up against all the best farmers markets in the country.

Plus, we do much of our organic and gourmet shopping at our many markets, including Whole Foods, Mother’s, Sprouts, Wholesome Choice, Zion, Mistsuwa, H Mart, Trader Joe’s and Gelson’s. Those should count as gourmet food stores if they don’t already!

Another odd category disparity: Irvine earns a bike score of 7th in the nation but a walking score of 70. Even more confusing are these rankings:

Hiking trails: 17thRunning trails: 34th Walking trails: 23rd

Most if not all of the trails in the city would be included in all three categories, one would think. On the other hand, those are high scores compared to most of the 170 other cities.

So let’s all get our cholesterol checked, go for a hike, bike or run, and eat some healthy food so we break the top 5 in the nation on the next study. ​